(I did not know till after I had left the farm gate open, and the
hens had got into the garden, that these feathered bipeds display
a great partiality for the young buds of plants of the genus viola,
to which they are extremely destructive. I was told that by the
gardener. I looked it up in the gardening book afterwards to be
sure he was right. You do learn a lot of things in the country.)

We went through the garden as far as the church, and then we rested
a bit in the porch, and just looked into the basket to see what the
'snack' was. It proved to be sausage rolls and queen cakes, and a
Lent pie in a round tin dish, and some hard-boiled eggs, and some
apples. We all ate the apples at once, so as not to have to carry
them about with us. The churchyard smells awfully good. It is the
wild thyme that grows on the graves. This is another thing we did
not know before we came into the country.

Then the door of the church tower was ajar, and we all went up; it
had always been locked before when we had tried it.

We saw the ringers' loft where the ends of the bellropes hang down
with long, furry handles to them like great caterpillars, some red,
and some blue and white, but we did not pull them. And then we
went up to where the bells are, very big and dusty among large
dirty beams; and four windows with no glass, only shutters like
Venetian blinds, but they won't pull up. There were heaps of
straws and sticks on the window ledges. We think they were owls'
nests, but we did not see any owls.

Then the tower stairs got very narrow and dark, and we went on up,
and we came to a door and opened it suddenly, and it was like being